ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (October 17, 2001 1:44 p.m. EDT) - A year after a Taliban ban virtually
wiped out opium production in Afghanistan, desperate Afghan farmers are
once again preparing their fields for planting poppies,
a U.N. official said Wednesday.

That could signal a major increase next year in the availability
of heroin and other opium-based narcotics in markets in the United
States and Western Europe.

Bernard Frahi, the U.N. Drug Control Program representative for
Pakistan and Afghanistan, said reports from major poppy-growing
areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan indicate fields have been
tilled in a manner that suggests farmers will be planting poppies.

It is clear the fields are being prepared for poppies and not
wheat, cotton or other crops because of the pattern of tilling,
Frahi said.

Poppy fields are tilled in an undulating pattern to allow for
free-flow of water. Fields prepared for other crops are flat with
canals constructed along large tracts for irrigation, he said.

Signs that Afghan farmers are resuming poppy cultivation are a
bitter disappointment to U.N. drug control officials. Last year,
the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, banned poppy
production as "un-Islamic."

Before that order, which the United Nations said was rigorously
enforced, Afghanistan had been the world's largest producer of
opium poppies.

As a result of the ban, areas of Afghanistan controlled by the
Taliban produced a few hundred tons of opium, compared with 3,200
tons produced last year and 4,500 tons the year before.

"This was the one success story in Afghanistan," Frahi said.
"For us it was very important and came after three years of
dialogue with the Taliban."

The planting season begins in October and continues for the next
two months, Frahi said. Harvest time is in April when it will be
evident to what extent Afghanistan has returned to opium
production.

Frahi said it appeared the Taliban, with their hands full in the
face of U.S. air attacks, were not enforcing the ban. Farmers
devastated by last year's ban were taking advantage of the relaxed
enforcement to plant a high-profit crop.

He said Omar issued an order on Sept. 3 extending the ban - a
week before the terrorist attacks in the United States.
"Everything stopped on Sept. 12," Frahi said.

According to a U.N. report released Wednesday, the Taliban had
reduced poppy production in Afghanistan by an incredible 91
percent.

"Almost all major former poppy growing provinces had no poppy
or relatively small areas under cultivation this year," the report
said. "The reductions are clearly the result of the implementation
of the opium ban."

Most of the poppies grown last year in Afghanistan were in the
5-10 percent of the country controlled by the opposition northern
alliance, Frahi said. He said production in opposition-controlled
areas was up this year because opium dealers were offering farmers
"10 times more for opium as well as cash advances."

The Taliban ban may have been a major contribution to reducing
heroin in the West but was a devastating blow for Afghanistan's
farmers, Frahi said.

Farmers usually borrow money for seeds and other supplies and
pay off the loan at harvest time. However, with the poppy ban in
place, Taliban drug control officers said some destitute farmers
were so desperate for cash they were giving their daughters, some
as young as 10 years old, as brides in exchange for having loans
written off.

Frahi said hundreds of small farmers sold their land to repay
debts. Farmers and day laborers were among the tens of thousands of
refugees who slipped into Pakistan late last year and early this
year.

According to U.N. figures, the Taliban made about $30 million
from opium production in Afghanistan before the ban. The money came
from taxes the Islamic militia charged farmers.

The total gross income of drug production in Afghanistan is
about $180 million.